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<div class="edition-single--book-title">The End of Policing</div>
<div class="edition-single--book-contributors"><span>by <a
href="https://www.versobooks.com/authors/1660-alex-s-vitale">Alex
S. Vitale</a></span></div>
<div class="edition-single--book-teaser">
<p>The problem is not overpolicing, it is policing itself</p>
</div>
<div class="edition-single--book-description">
<p><b>LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER</b></p>
<p>Recent years have seen an explosion of protest against police
brutality and repression. Among activists, journalists and
politicians, the conversation about how to respond and improve
policing has focused on accountability, diversity, training, and
community relations. Unfortunately, these reforms will not
produce results, either alone or in combination. The core of the
problem must be addressed: the nature of modern policing itself.</p>
<p>This book attempts to spark public discussion by revealing the
tainted origins of modern policing as a tool of social control.
It shows how the expansion of police authority is inconsistent
with community empowerment, social justice—even public safety.
Drawing on groundbreaking research from across the world, and
covering virtually every area in the increasingly broad range of
police work, Alex Vitale demonstrates how law enforcement has
come to exacerbate the very problems it is supposed to solve.</p>
<p>In contrast, there are places where the robust implementation
of policing alternatives—such as legalization, restorative
justice, and harm reduction—has led to a decrease in crime,
spending, and injustice. The best solution to bad policing may
be an end to policing.</p>
</div>
<div class="edition-single--book-reviews js-isReadmoreized">
<h2 class="edition-single--book-reviews-header">Reviews</h2>
<div class="edition-single--book-review">
<p>“<i>The End of Policing</i> combines the best in academic
research with rhetorical urgency to explain why the ordinary
array of police reforms will be ineffective in reducing
abusive policing. Alex Vitale shows that we must move beyond
conceptualizing public safety as interdiction, exclusion, and
arrest if we hope to achieve racial and economic justice.”</p>
<p class="byline">– Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Professor, CUNY
Graduate Center, Co-Founder of Critical Resistance, author of
<i>Golden Gulag</i></p>
</div>
<div class="edition-single--readmoreized-reviews" style="display:
block;">
<div class="edition-single--book-review">
<p>“Offers a compelling digest of the dynamics of crime and
law enforcement, and a polemic against the militarization of
everything. Vitale calls for a dismantling of our very
notion of the police: a sprawling, untethered bureaucracy
permitted to use lethal force and unaccountable to the
people.”</p>
<p class="byline">– E. Tammy Kim, <em>Nation</em></p>
</div>
<div class="edition-single--book-review">
<p>“<i>The End of Policing</i>'s great strength lies in
demonstrating that if the shape of American policing is
historical, it is also contingent. We could have made
different choices regarding how we set about securing the
public against the array of threats that confront it, and –
refreshingly, at this moment of general despair – Vitale
believes we still can.”</p>
<p class="byline">– Adam Greenfield, <em>LA Review of Books</em></p>
</div>
<div class="edition-single--book-review">
<p>“Deeply researched, but also vibrantly and accessibly
written,<i> The End of Policing</i> is essential reading for
anyone wishing to understand the dire state of policing
today. Alex Vitale shows compellingly that as long as we ask
the police to shore up a fundamentally unequal and
dysfunctional social order, superficial ‘reforms’ won’t do
much to help. And he offers concrete alternatives aimed at
restoring communities and getting police out of the business
of trying to contain social problems that they cannot—and
should not—control.”</p>
<p class="byline">– Elliott Currie, Professor, University of
California, Irvine, author of <i>Crime and Punishment in
America</i></p>
</div>
<div class="edition-single--book-review">
<p>“An extremely vital book on policing. Should be assigned at
all police academies. If only the Philando Castile jurors
had read this.”</p>
<p class="byline">– Jeffrey Fagan, Director of Columbia Law
School's Center for Crime, Community, and Law</p>
</div>
<div class="edition-single--book-review">
<p>“Challenging standard accounts of how to reform policing,
Alex Vitale argues that true safety demands directing
resources away from police and prisons and towards economic
development, education, and drug treatment. Urgent,
provocative, and timely, <i>The End of Policing</i> will
make you question most of what you have been taught to
believe about crime and how to solve it.”</p>
<p class="byline">– James Forman Jr., Professor, Yale Law
School and author of<i> Locking Up Our Own</i></p>
</div>
<div class="edition-single--book-review">
<p>“Unfortunately, neither increased diversity in police
forces nor body
cameras nor better training make any seeming difference. We
need
to restructure our society and put resources into
communities
themselves, an argument Alex Vitale makes very
persuasively.”</p>
<p class="byline">– Rachel Kushner, author of <i>The
Flamethrowers</i></p>
</div>
<div class="edition-single--book-review">
<p>“In a tightly constructed monograph filled with reform
suggestions, Vitale decries the evolution of police agencies
as tools of the white establishment to suppress
dissatisfaction among the have-nots. A clearly argued,
sure-to-be-controversial book.”</p>
<p class="byline">– <em>Kirkus</em></p>
</div>
<div class="edition-single--book-review">
<p>“In a chapter on each issue, Vitale sets out the problem in
depth, explores the liberal view of reforms that seek only
to remove the worst excesses of police conduct and to
restore the legitimacy of using force in the interests of
society, and then offers ideas for alternatives.”</p>
<p class="byline">– <em>The Network for Police Monitoring</em></p>
</div>
<div class="edition-single--book-review">
<p>“Vitale’s amassing of trenchant facts into an enticing
intellectual framework makes <i>The End of Policing</i> a
must-read for anyone interesting in waging and winning the
fight for economic and social justice.”</p>
<p class="byline">– Michael Hirsch, <em>Indypendent</em></p>
</div>
<div class="edition-single--book-review">
<p>“<i>The End of Policing</i> is that holiday argument book,
the relatively brief stack of facts you can hand to a
relative who still talks about those nice guys who helped
out with the flat tire and doesn’t see why any lives have to
matter more than they already do. A thorough rinsing of the
American criminal justice system.”</p>
<p class="byline">– Sasha Frere-Jones, <em>4 Columns</em></p>
</div>
<div class="edition-single--book-review">
<p>“A welcome challenge to reformist thinking and a powerful
argument against social and economic injustice, inequality
and racism.”</p>
<p class="byline">– <em>LSE Review of Books</em></p>
</div>
<div class="edition-single--book-review">
<p>“Suggests a radical alternative
that, on the one hand, abolishes corrupt and lethal police
policies designed
to contain the racialised poor and, on the other, develops
and sustains safer
communities.”</p>
<p class="byline">– <em>Race & Class</em></p>
</div>
<div class="edition-single--book-review">
<p>“Offers a convincing argument that the traditional roles
played by police forces have been largely
counter-productive.”</p>
<p class="byline">– <em>Morning Star</em></p>
</div>
<div class="edition-single--book-review">
<p>“A compelling critique of modern policing.”</p>
<p class="byline">– Peter Stauber, <em>counter fire</em></p>
</div>
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